Joining Polylines with same attributes

[BrentLau]

Hello,

I'm currently working with a city_streets network shapefile, however I've found that almost all of the streets have been broken up into separate polylines (e.g. 3 separate polylines are all named Main St). Is there a way to merge multiple polylines, with the same attribute (i.e. the street name), together without having to manually do one at a time?

I'm hoping that by doing so, when I click the street segment with the identify tool, it'll just show the whole length of the street segment as Main st. instead of 3 separate ones that are lined up, all called Main St.

Thank you

[TimWitt]

Brent,

the dissolve tool should be able to do that for you.

Tim

[AlisonSchilling]

Dissolve should work - however.

My road file is in short segments and I want to use dissolve to merge the line segments together based on roads type - (primary/secondary). Several road segments that all have the same type I would like to be 1 line - The only way I have been able to get this to work is through an edit session, selecting all the segments and then (edit - merge) - however this file is huge, I am working with a clip portion currently trying to develop a process and I should just be able to dissolve the lines based on type. I have tried dissolve, unsplit, in a file geodatabase and as shape files. I have attached a graphic - all lines selected (blue) and black lines are all primary lines. My end goal is to merge the segments together based on type, then planarize based on road intersections. This will give me the road segments I need to work with.

I am working in 10.1

there is information in http://forums.arcgis.com/threads/22460-merge-line-segments?highlight=dissolve+lines

[AlisonSchilling]

There is no error and it works in other parts of the file I have not run topology but have checked the vertices in an edit session and they are snapped. I have no idea why it is not working. That is what I was hoping someone here could tell me, or another way to get that result.

[AlisonSchilling]

thanks Sol for all the suggestions but none of them work and I cannot figure it out - the only way so far is to edit - select the lines - then edit -merge - save.

This is only a clip of my final file & I need to be able to repeat my process.

[AlisonSchilling]

I zipped the shapefile from how I got it - so there are currently multipart features- I have tried to dissolve and other tools on both the multi part & after exploding the features. Please let me know if they work for you.

thanks

[AlisonSchilling]

I can get that far also - but I do not want 3 multi-part attributes - I need the actual lines that are the same attribute field I select to merge together into 1 polyline - this long line will then get segmented (planarize) based on where other roads meet or intersect the long line. This will give me a file of "like" roads by road segment - I can than perform intersect based on my polygon file, which will keep the attribution I need for the now smaller road segments - the smaller road segments need to be joined with the long road file so that I can get a percent of road segment based on polygon attribute per segment - So if the 1 road segment goes through 3 polygons in my file & 2 of the polygons are the same separated by nothing or the 3rd value I need to be able to calculate the percent of road segment with like values - see my post from  "03-24-2014, 01:56 AM". I need to come up with a process - I even tried a different Roads file - and get this - it worked better creating "like" road segments but then it SPLIT other road segments into pieces. I think I might have to get with ESRI support.

[AlisonSchilling]

I ran topology and verified a large amount of things with this file prior to trying to dissolve - however - one last ditch effort search for suggestions - led me to below - I just finished running it through this...

http://blogs.esri.com/esri/arcgis/2011/11/15/cleaning-up-line-data-with-geoprocessing/

This worked - a dissolve now dissolves all primary lines that connect. and I do not have multi part lines -

Thanks for all help and suggestions.

[AditiPanhalkar]

@AlisonSchilling were you able to dissolve the polylines by name? I'm trying to do something similar. My dataset also has multipart features with only 'road' or 'track' as names- what I want to achieve is a dissolve for all other names except for the ones that are named 'road' and 'track'. Any help would be greatly appreciated. 

Cheers!